By Jordan Carleo-Evangelist Staff writer

Published 4:27 pm, Wednesday, December 22, 2010

ALBANY -- By a single vote, Council 82, the union that represents Albany police officers, appears to have survived a breakaway attempt engineered by an insurgent union -- and the tie-breaking ballot was found in, of all places, a trash can used to store empty envelopes.

The improbable end to the hard-fought election came Wednesday when, after three weeks of mail-in balloting, Council 82 and its local, the Albany Police Officers Union, tallied 108 votes to 107 for the newly formed Albany Police Benevolent Association.

One officer voted for neither camp, while another envelope came back empty with no ballot inside, and 49 of the 266 eligible patrol officers and detectives did not vote at all.

Council 82 officials -- led by President Christian Mesley, who also is president of the APOU -- exchanged incredulous and sometimes uneasy glances at the Wolf Road offices of the Public Employment Relations Board after the initial hand count ended with two identical piles of pale-green ballots: 107-107.

The tie prompted PBA attorney Ronald Dunn to challenge one ballot on which an officer appeared to have voted for the PBA before crossing out his or her vote and voting for Council 82. If that ballot were stricken, it could have handed victory to the PBA, which was being led by Officer Michael Delano.

But just moments later, while the administrative law judge overseeing the count was conferring with colleagues outside the room, a PERB staff member discovered an unopened envelope in the trash can that was being used to store the open ones.

"We don't have a tie anymore," the staffer said, holding it aloft and triggering a round of murmurs and a flurry of text-messaging from those assembled in the audience, many of whom had been keeping partisans not present updated on the seesaw contest as it unfolded.

The found ballot was cast for Council 82, putting the incumbent union -- which has represented Albany officers for 36 years -- up 108-107.

The likely culprit was an automated ballot-opening machine that had been malfunctioning throughout the count, spitting out unopened envelopes that needed to be run through a second time. The intrigue, however, didn't end there.

Given the closeness of the vote, at Dunn's urging, judge Melanie Wlasuk called for a recount, which ended with Council 82 picking up yet another vote that had been missed the first time. A second hand recount confirmed the results of the first, leading Council 82 to essentially declare victory.

"It appears at this point that the matter has been resolved," said Ennio Corsi, general counsel to Council 82, a statewide law enforcement union that claims some 5,000 members and which is affiliated with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the AFL-CIO.

Wlasuk pressed Dunn on how he wanted to proceed, noting that -- while she won't make the decision -- in all likelihood the challenged ballot would be thrown out entirely or awarded to Council 82. Either scenario would not change the outcome.

"The way that ballot looks," Wlasuk said, noting a challenge could drag on for months, "it seems highly unlikely that the vote is going to go to the PBA."

Afterward, Dunn acknowledged that the ballot probably would be thrown out, but said the PBA is reserving its decision on the challenge.

The closeness of the vote, Dunn said, was made more dispiriting for his clients by the fact that they know -- based on the unique numbers assigned to each ballot envelope -- that some of their supporters did not vote.

"If you compare the numbers to a list, you know who did not vote at all," Dunn said. "And to say there is disappointment is an understatement."

He noted that in October more than half the 266 eligible officers and detectives submitted cards supporting the vote, which is known formally as a decertification vote.

"What can you say? Council 82 is to be commended. They did a better job of getting their supporters to return their ballots," Dunn said. "Hopefully they'll take away from this the positive message that obviously there's a significant number of people who felt strongly enough about sending a message that they voted for a different group."

Delano acknowledged that officers "being embarrassed by certain individuals" in Council 82's leadership helped stir desire to break away but added that the concerns were also largely financial, with members questioning what they were getting in return for the thousands of dollars they pay annually for their ties to Council 82, AFSCME and other groups.

Delano contends officers would get more value for their dues if they formed their own independent PBA like most of the other large municipal departments in the state, including Colonie, Schenectady and Troy.

"I sleep well at night knowing that we ran a totally honest campaign," Delano said. "They intentionally misled guys to scare them into staying with Council 82."

Delano stressed that the split over the union had not translated to personal divisions among officers, but Mesley said he believes the department is sharply divided and acknowledged it will be his job to fix that.

"It's going to be very difficult. I would say it's pretty bitter, a pretty bitterly divided membership at this point," said Mesley, who has led the APOU since 2004. "I would just like the membership to know that as an individual, as the president, that I have a lot of work to do over the next nine months remaining in my term to bring this local back together."

Mesley, who is nearing retirement, said he will not seek re-election in the fall.

Jordan Carleo-Evangelist can be reached at 454-5445 or by e-mail at jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com.